


Reunion

by atenaglory



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:55:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7763962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atenaglory/pseuds/atenaglory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into Garrus' feelings upon returning to the Normandy after the incident on Omega.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> This was pretty hard to write 'cause I've been stuck in a creative block, but I really really wanted to write it, and I ended up with something I liked, so I'm very happy.
> 
> Anyway, I love the idea that Shepard hung out and grew really close to everyone on the SR-1, but I've only played ME1 once and my Shepard was just... not very social and more focused on beating Saren. So even though that wasn't a serious characterization I had (at that point I was just playing the game because my friend asked me to), I do draw on that a little bit in this piece. Still, once I replay ME1 I'll probably go back and write about relationships!!

Here was Shepard.

Given the events of the past day, Garrus was hardly in any position to question her appearance there, impossible though it was. She was there to save his ass. All he could do was cough out an, “I thought you were dead.” She sounded happy to see him, though. A comfort.

They were still fighting—now she was taking out merc after merc for his sake—but he was exhausted and confused and overjoyed. Was he even still alive? He had barely gotten to ask about what she was doing there. Who were these other humans? The Cerberus emblem on both of their armor had dimly registered, but it hadn’t clicked that she might actually be working with Cerberus. Either way, they were helping him. Plus, from the looks of it Shepard was in charge. Just the way it should be.

If Shepard had stayed in charge, Garrus’ team wouldn’t have been wiped off the map. Shepard never pushed her team past their limits. She never went for more than was necessary. If Garrus had stopped when his team had asked, it never would have turned out that way. Now all of their blood was on his hands.

His life had honestly been a complete mess since… The Normandy had been destroyed. Funny, he hadn’t even been a part of the Normandy’s crew, yet its destruction had sent his life off course.

Well. Who was he kidding? Shepard’s death was what had changed everything.

The Council had barely waited for her to be declared missing in action before beginning to release official reports denouncing the existence of the Reapers. They had declared that the threat had ended with Saren. Was that the treatment that dead Spectres got? Being censored? Having all of their work discredited? Maybe the title was overrated. In any case, Garrus’ frustration with C-Sec bureaucracy had been steadily building, and Shepard’s death had been the breaking point. He’d felt as though he needed to get off of the Citadel, and fast. After making that smuggler cough up his source, Garrus had headed straight for Omega without looking back.

And now she was downstairs cleaning up for him, while he kept the bridge clear. But he still wasn’t entirely sure that any of this was happening. He had been fighting them off for hours. He’d lost track of how many hours it had been. How many mercs he had killed. Shepard had appeared right as he was about to say his last goodbye to his father. Wasn’t it possible that she was just a hallucination? That his fatigue had mixed with his last basic desire to survive? Shepard had always represented hope to people, so it made sense that his mind would summon her in its final stretch of desperation. But, no… He had definitely handed her his sniper rifle. And she had definitely used it to obliterate a mech’s head. She was always so damned cool. And now, she was back from the dead.

What a day it had been. Despite his immense losses, and despite his brush with death, which occurred before he’d even had time to address what he already knew was his greatest failure, he was relieved. He was so glad to see Shepard again.

And then he was out cold.

A flash of Shepard’s face above him.

Her eyes shining behind her helmet. Why were they shining so brightly in this dark room? Everything was dark but her eyes. She was yelling something and he had never heard her sound so scared.

When he woke up again, he was in the Normandy’s Med Bay. It was different, but he felt certain that it was the Normandy. He pushed himself up from his bed, but winced feeling a pain shooting from his jaw down his neck. He wanted to shake his head clear and figure out what was going on, but he concluded that maybe his head needed to be handled gently for now.

“I suppose I should have expected you to wake up too early, Garrus,” came a warm and familiar voice.

“Ugh. Dr. Chakwas? What happened?” He looked across the room. The doctor was sitting at a desk, in front of a window that looked out onto a kitchen area. The fact that Dr. Chakwas was here further convinced him that it was the Normandy, although looking around made him aware that everything was brand new and better quality than what he had known. He remembered the Cerberus emblem on those humans’ armor, and suddenly remembered that when Shepard died the Normandy had apparently been blown out of the sky.

“Well, Garrus,” Dr. Chakwas began, bringing him out of his thoughts, “to put it plainly, your last meal was a rocket from a gunship.”

“Oh. That’s…” He shook his head slightly, but immediately winced and brought his hand up to his face. “That explains the pain.”

“You should have stayed asleep, my dear,” Dr. Chakwas smiled. She didn’t seem too concerned, considering her patient had been blasted in the face with a rocket.

“I’m still not sure I’m really alive, Doctor.”

Dr. Chakwas’ nonchalant attitude dissolved, and she looked at him with surprise and concern now.

“The words I’ve never heard from our once-dead commander from you, Garrus? What happened?”

“I should have died on Omega,” he said quietly, looking down. “All of my men did. I was surrounded and alone and my dead ex-commander saved me. Does that sound like it makes any sense?”

“You never doubted the commander’s ability to do the impossible before.”

Garrus paused. Dr. Chakwas looked at him with a strange mix of emotion. Humans showed their every emotion on their face, but he found her hard to read at that moment. She seemed proud, but also uncertain. Evidently, she had her own doubts about Shepard. But she was here, on the Normandy SR2, with the new Shepard. And so was he.

“I guess I am alive, then,” he decided. The doctor nodded at him, her face relaxing into an easily deciphered display of satisfaction.

“Well, you’d better go and see her. She’s been worried sick, you know.”

Garrus started to smartly retort, after all, he was sure that no one had ever seen Commander Shepard worry, but he suddenly remembered Shepard’s panicked voice from before. He saw her brightly shining eyes piercing through the darkness.

“You’re the first person from her old squad to join her, you know. She’s terrified of losing you.”

This took more effort to process. It made sense, they had history together and it seemed like Cerberus was involved here, which would probably have made it hard for Shepard to relax. But Garrus was sure that “terrified” was an exaggeration. Shepard had lost people before, and in this war it was almost certain that she would lose more people. She would keep pushing forward either way. Hell, she had lost her own life and was still somehow managing to push forward, so something like Garrus’ death wouldn’t possibly stop her. Especially if her current mission was against the Reapers.

But that didn’t mean that she was indifferent.

“Where can I find her, doc?”

“I’ll ask Jacob to summon her to the Comm Room.”

Garrus eased himself out of his bed and moved to the door. As the door slid open, he turned back towards the doctor.

“Thanks for patching me up, doc.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t thank me just yet,” Doctor Chakwas chuckled without looking up at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I told you, Garrus, the rocket hit you in your face.”

“Well, shit,” he said, and, touching the side of his face again, turned back to the door. Absently, he muttered, “I wonder what kinds of girls are into battle scars….”

 

Garrus hadn’t been in any state to examine Shepard too closely when she’d rescued him on Omega, but now he could see that Shepard had some scars of her own that he didn’t recognize. In fact, her face was covered in them. They glowed a dim orange, pulsing slowly and faintly with her heartbeat. Shepard might have some trouble finding a partner, herself.  If… if she was interested in that? Shepard was always so focused. When she’d found him on Omega and called out to him, it might have been the most emotion he had ever heard in her voice. While they were fighting Saren, it was as though the mission, as well as her Alliance assignments, were all she thought about. Even though Liara and Kaidan were both clearly carrying torches for her, she hadn’t paid them any attention. She had spoken infrequently, with the exception of her rousing speeches, and smiled less often. She was always serious. She seemed far more relaxed now, though. Perhaps losing the rigid military structure of the Systems Alliance had done her some good.

She’d explained the situation—that Cerberus had rebuilt her and that she was working with them while they had overlapping goals. She had seemed worried about what he would think now that she was sort of working with Cerberus, but frankly, he really didn’t care about anything but the fact that she was alive. He assured her that her new affiliation didn’t matter, and privately observed that she was still calling the shots where it counted, so there was nothing to worry about anyway. Apparently her agreement with Cerberus hadn’t gone over very well with Tali, whom she’d briefly encountered at Freedom’s Progress. Garrus knew, though, that Tali would have trusted Shepard, and probably would have joined her in spite of the ties to Cerberus, had she not been tending to the needs of the Migrant Fleet. Shepard had spoken as though she understood and accepted this, but she still seemed a little down about it.

But Garrus had lost all of his own attachments due to his poor judgment. He’d explained that situation as best he could. The wounds, physical and psychological, from events following Sidonis’ betrayal were still quite fresh, and he was unable to give Shepard much detail about what had happened, but she had promised to help him with Sidonis, and that was all that mattered. She always had his back, and he knew that he could count on that. If she had come back before Sidonis had sabotaged him, Garrus probably would have gone with her. He would have found some way to remotely lead the group, or simply let the group disband. Either way would have been better than what had actually happened.

As the conversation drew to a close, Garrus noticed Shepard’s eyes lingering on his scar. She quietly looked at his face, her features softer than he was used to.

“Are you okay?”

“You’re the one that just called me ugly,” he quipped. He still wasn’t sure that she had been all that worried, but on the off-chance that she was, he wanted to make her smile, like she had been when she first saw him on Omega.

“Garrus, I thought I’d lost you.”

“I, ah… I know what you mean, Shepard.”

She paused, eyes widening. She took a deep breath, and said, “I’m sorry Garrus.”

“Shepard,” he sighed. “What are _you_ sorry for? _I’m_ sorry. I should have been there. I should have stayed with you instead of going back to the Citadel to waste my time. I should—”

“Garrus.” Her eyes were shining again. “You’re here. You’re the only one who’s here.”

He looked down at her. In the short time since he’d woken up, he’d seen more emotion from her than during the entirety of his time on the SR1. Shepard had always been a hero to him. An awe-inspiring symbol in the form of a human woman. But now he was starting to see her as just… a human woman. A person. This was going to take some getting used to. He should start now.

“So you were that worried, huh?”

Her brow furrowed slightly, before a grin spread over her face.

“Not as worried as you, apparently.” She mocked, “’I should have been there. I should have stayed with you.’”

“Alright, fair enough.”

“And what the heck is ‘Archangel,’ anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more self-aggrandizing superhero name.”

“Hey, now, that’s just what the locals called me when I started helping them out.”

“And you loved every minute of it.”

It was his turn to frown. Yes, this would take some getting used to. She was smirking up at him, but the smile faded and she began to look at him wistfully again.

She sighed and said, “I’m sorry for what you went through when I… died. Thank you for being here with me. The only people I’m sure I can trust right now are you, Dr. Chakwas, and Joker. That list doesn’t even include myself for the time being.”

“Well, I believe it’s you, Commander. I joked about it earlier, but I’ll follow you to hell if the fight and your orders take us there.”

She grinned. “Good to have you back, Vakarian.”

“Good to be back, Shepard.”

And it really was. The new Normandy was different, but better in some ways. Although the crew was Cerberus, none of them seemed to hold any prejudices and instead they gave him a friendly welcome to the ship. And best of all, Shepard was running things. Just the way it should be. Garrus was still nursing his wounds, physical and psychological, but this was the best place to do it. His entire life had turned around. He had been in death’s grasp, but now he was back adventuring the stars, dealing out justice as Commander Shepard’s right hand. She was the kind of person who could make something as impossible as the current situation into a reality, and Garrus was proud to follow her once more.


End file.
